44. Syneca #3
But he shouldn’t have survived that. I thought back to Lucy’s story of her brother. Then to the athlete we’d watched die during the Nexus championship. Who made that runestone for him? And what was it?
Before I could form a single word, he spun on a heel and walked right back out of the shop.
Pip stared after him. “Did he just—”
“Yes,” I said.
“But—”
“I know.”
Ramiel looked between us. “Do either of you want to explain what just happened?”
“No,” I said, walking toward the door. “There’s no time.”
The shifter moved fast for someone who’d recently been frozen between forms in a trinket shop. He kept to the narrower streets, never the main road, cutting through alleys with ease.
Ramiel changed our appearances twice as we followed, a different coat here, different hair there, small changes layered fast enough that anyone glancing back would see three different strangers each time. Pip stayed tucked close, saying nothing.
We followed him for forty minutes before the building came into view and a new sense of dread melted over me. The rail station. The one hoarding a slew of witches, I was sure. The source of the power I kept feeling through the streets of this city.
The place had been closed for years, it seemed.
Its tracks long since pulled up and sold for scrap, its arched entrance gone dark.
The clock above the doors had stopped at some point and no one had bothered to restart it.
Even the windows along the upper level were boarded and from the street it looked like everything it was supposed to look like.
Empty. Forgotten. Not worth a second glance.
The shifter slipped through a side door without breaking stride.
We watched from across the street.
“Well?” Ramiel asked quietly.
“Look,” Pip pointed.
I’d already seen it before she said anything.
Movement from the gaps in the boards on the upper windows, shapes passing back and forth.
A faint thread of light at the base of the side door that hadn’t been there a moment before.
And in the air, that same unmistakable hum of witches practicing magic in numbers.
A lot of numbers.
“I knew it the second I touched that stone.”
Ramiel’s hand closed around my arm before I’d made it three steps off the curb.“Don’t.”
I looked at his hand. Then at his face. “I would let go if I were you.”
“Syneca.” His voice had dropped into something I hadn’t heard from him before, darker and more direct, the demon prince underneath the easy charm sitting right at the surface. “Walking into a building full of witches is the single worst idea you’ve had since going to Esara without me.”
“Remove your hand and your power, Ramiel.”
“I am telling you, as someone who is helping keep you alive through considerable effort and personal inconvenience, that this is not—”
“I don’t take orders from you.” I held his gaze. “I don’t take them from anyone. Remove it. I want to look like myself when I walk in there.”
His jaw tightened. “You have a death wish.”
“I have a purpose.” I stepped closer, dropping my voice.
“Those are witches in there. Hunted, hiding, afraid of every face they don’t recognize.
If I walk through that door wearing borrowed features and they realize it, I lose any chance of their trust before I’ve opened my mouth. Some witches know glamours. Remove it.”
Something moved behind his eyes, the calculation of a man deciding which risk he could live with. His power lifted.
My copper hair fell around my shoulders. I felt the prickle of freckles returning. My own face looked back at me in the dark glass of a shop window across the street.
“For the record,” Ramiel said, “I think this is a terrible idea.”
“Noted.” I crossed the street without looking back.
But even though I could feel the power pulsing from within, even though I knew there was something to learn within, I couldn’t do it.
I could only see Silas’s scowl, feel his anger when he found out I’d just risked my life chasing a random shifter.
So, with great reluctance, I turned and walked away.
“Don’t make me burn that smug expression off your pretty face, demon prince,” I said without looking back at him.
His voice dipped low into a tone I’m sure any other woman would have swooned over. “Careful. You keep calling me pretty and I’m going to start thinking you’re interested.”
“I’d swoon, but unfortunately I’ve spoken to you before.”
“I can’t wait to tell Silas you listened to me.” I heard the grin in his voice before he continued, far too casually, “Especially considering he owns your firstborn child, or whatever ridiculous terms you two settled on in that bargain that bound him to you.”
I kept my face and breathing as neutral as possible, realizing that Ramiel had no idea about the terms of the bargain with my grandmother.
Interesting.
Then I smiled and flashed him a grin. “It's nothing quite so fun, I just have to carry little treats in my pockets and reward him whenever he behaves.”
Pip flew closer to me. “You brought snacks?”